The relation between divine inspiration and biblical inerrancy
What is really the connection between divine inspiration and biblical inerrancy? The answer is that God made the nature of men to be able to acquire knowledge by looking around the world.
For example, you can look at the birds searching for crumbs of bread, look at the clouds, look at babies, starts etc.
Now, God has provided us the ability to learn what we don’t know from what we know.
As much as we are expanding our limitations, our borders, you learn about more things, we can estimate and have some kind of understanding. That may be true and may not be true about what is outside of our borders of understanding or knowledge. So this is the natural way of learning.
How Some claim that maybe what we know goes to a certain border and then outside of these borders. This is the natural way of learning. There is another way that God gave humankind to be able to learn, to receive information differently.
This way of learning is the knowledge that comes to the person and we can call it divine inspiration. True knowledge doesn’t have to be true, it can be false as well, but there is a possibility to derive true knowledge from even false knowledge. Though, that is not natural learning.
The source of all of the knowledge can only be God and the channels God uses to brings this knowledge and information to the person. What happens when a person receives “Ruach Hakodesh”? (Holy Spirit in Judaism)
This abundance of knowledge that comes through those channels from God is being observed within the mind of the person at his level and then he knows that without being able to explain where from, or how come but he just knows it and it becomes very clear and definite and he is very decisive about it. He feels that the truth of it is very strong. He’s very, very convinced and he knows, he feels it for himself.
Scripture and divine inspiration
Each person listens to his inner words, one knows that there were things in his life that he was sure that was true and he found out it was false and Vice versa, things that he thought is false, he found out to be true.
So it is very hard for us to understand what he is speaking about because of the way that we are receiving knowledge, is most of the time mixed with truth and false within.
There’s another level that the person sees something that is not nature. That is a message from God about something spiritual. For example. We know about the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, where e had a dream about the big sculpture that a certain part from Gold, Silver, Iron, Clay.
There was nothing in the world that was not existing sculptural. It was not something that was within reality, not in the past, but in the future, not in the present. It was a message and Daniel the prophet was able to explain what the message from God was.
That’s another way of receiving divine inspiration that gives a certain picture that is not part of nature. That’s something else. There are many levels, the middle level of the lower level, the lower levels within these. Divine inspiration. Subject matter.
What does divine inspiration mean?
People quite often have visions and ask: What does it mean? I saw this, so, what does it mean, is it a blessing? So one thing that is the common denominator between all of them is that the person that receives the divine inspiration feels very much his divine inspiration.
The big question is, how do you know? Maybe it’s in my imagination. Maybe it’s not true. So I heard from someone who he said it’s like falling and being in love when it happens you just know that you love them.
It can be that a person will have a certain abundance in his heart that he will understand something an Internal understanding of something without seeing a picture, avision doesn’t always have to come with a picture. It can be something that is purely a higher intellectual understanding.
The Power of the vision of a Kabbalist
A great Kabbalist was able to look on a wall and point to a certain stone and say in this stone there is an incarnation of a certain person that did a certain sin in his past life.
It doesn’t have to be such a big presentation. Just a
special understanding, for instance:
This meant that someone may go and see a certain person who is known as a great
“Tzaddiq” who can see something that’s about to happen and he somehow transfers
this knowledge within him.
There are times when God may insert a strong message in a man’s heart about the meaning of something.
So, again, this is a concept of Ruach Kodesh and divine inspiration and it is not a narrow, very defined specific. Definition, it is very broad.
Many things can be called divine inspiration. It can be for different reasons and it can be in different ways. So when do you know for sure to say that? Now it’s starting to be divine inspiration. It can be something about the wisdom of the person. He sees a few things and he connects them in his mind and understands something.
He saw a person going up somewhere with a gift in hand and later sees that he comes back without it. So he understands that he left it for someone somewhere. I can understand that this person is righteous, that he doesn’t want to embarrass the person, so he gives him the present.
How Your Spiritual Existence Affects Your Physical Existence
The Kabbalist “Ramchal” gives us the opposite direction of life, that the only existence that you can rely on is the spiritual existence and the physical existence maybe just a little. Maybe I don’t know. I’m here. Maybe some of me a little bit of me. Are you here more or less? Maybe Also in other places? If you look at the physical existence in a way that is not so definite, it’s very flexible.
It is much easier to explain those things because people get used to those ideas from their quantum physics that all the electrons and the protons in the matter, and that everything that we see as solid is not solid. There is so much movement and Chaotic levels that as much as you go down to deeper levels of it. You find out that whatever we see as solid, solid existence Is not solid at all. It can be nothing or can be everything
All of the physical existence is beneath has almost no meaning. So with this modern physics, we can understand a little bit better. What does it mean? What is Ramchal saying here? That all of our physical existence is a question. What is it? If it is or if it’s not, where is it coming from, where does it go? There are so many doubts about it.
The spiritual existence that we have, is something solid. We know that we have a soul. We know that we have God. We know that there is a connection between God and our souls. There is also a physical world, but what does it mean? Why would we need it?
Good question. It’s a big doubt. Maybe we don’t need it. God made it so we know whether we need it, but it’s a doubt. What’s the meaning of it? So the meaning of prophecy is reaching this level of connecting to God. Where the person is really alive.
Meaning. One way or another it can be a long time after that, but eventually, everybody will get to this level eventually in the upper realms but someone that is getting to such a connection while he is alive in this world.
So, while a person is in the position of being a prophet, in addition to the experience of connection with God, he has all kinds of understandings and different parts of wisdom that goes through him but still as far as he is concerned it’s not the main thing. It’s like a side effect. The real essence is the connection with God.
In Conclusion – Learning About Visions from a Kaleidoscope
There is this kids Kaleidoscope game that they look at a viewing toy and it has different shapes inside.
Kaleidoscope is a good analogy for learning about visions because in the Kaleidoscope, there are always the same ingredients. But every time you look into it, because of the mirrors, it goes in a different order and you see a different picture there.
Something completely different. But the ingredients stay the same. So how can it be because of every angle, every movement makes a huge difference? So the same thing here. There are different contents. That makes a difference in the message the prophet receives.
What if a camera’s lens are not clear? It’s not working, it is blurry!
Now, you just have to clear the lens, right?
There are many factors that can make a huge difference. Even though it’s a very expensive camera and you’re looking at a person you want to take a picture, but if you don’t have everything right, you won’t be able to take a good picture.
All of the prophets want to connect to God to receive the knowledge that will help them, so they can help the rest of humanity. But they have to have all the preparations so everything will be right when they take the picture, it will be clear with the right angle.
This post is written based on Rabbi Yaakov Avraham Shepherd’s course.
You can login to his web site in the following link: https://kingdavidkabbalah.com/
